Tips On Talking

The Wedding Toast

Heather Stubbs — Tue, 21 May 2013 22:36:20 +0000

As we move into June, the month for weddings, here’s a “Tips on Talking” re-post from shortly after the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Kate.

‘Tis the season. Of weddings, that is. The prospect of giving a wedding toast need not spoil your enjoyment of the day. There is a wealth of helpful information on the internet. Here are a few pointers to get you started.

Traditionally, wedding toasts are given by four people: the father of the bride, the groom, the best man and the maid/matron of honour. Nowadays, many couples depart from tradition with other speakers and even guests invited to offer their congratulations. As I recall, even I said a few words at my husband’s and my wedding.

Putting yourself in the audience’s shoes, and especially in the shoes of the one receiving your toast, will give you a guide for creating your speech. Think about what makes it easy for you to engage with the speaker, and what turns you off. Here are a few basic tips.

Be brief. Under five minutes. An audience never minds if a speech is short, but they sure don’t like it when someone goes on and on.
Be kind. Of course you want to be amusing, but never at anyone else’s expense. Poking a little fun is fine, but be careful with your humour. Remember that parents and older people will be present, so don’t be risqué. Prince Harry, in his speech at the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s reception, referred to his brother, Prince William, as “the Dude”, but apparently, and wisely, edited out a remark about Kate’s having lovely legs. It would have been in poor taste, especially in that company! If you are not comfortable telling jokes, don’t feel obliged to do so. Your positive tone and the smile on your face will be sufficient. Never divulge anything that would embarrass the recipient of the toast. And never bring up the subject of an “ex” – ever.
Be focused. Craft your speech with a clear structure – a beginning, middle and end. If at least half the people present don’t know you, begin by briefly describing your relationship to the couple and saying something positive about the wedding ceremony. Focus the body of your speech on the bride and groom. What occurs to you about them as a couple? What are their shared interests? Are there a few anecdotes you can tell about how they met or about their engagement? Finish your speech on a high and hopeful note, wishing the new couple a happy, healthy and prosperous future.
Be authentic. Don’t be afraid to let your loving feelings for the couple show. After all, the whole event is about love, isn’t it?
Be prepared. Don’t imagine that you can wing it. Know what you are going to say and practice it, many times. It doesn’t matter if you don’t say exactly the words you had planned, but by being well prepared, you can vary the way they come out without losing your way. People who are good at “ad libbing” are those who are thoroughly prepared in the way it was intended to go.
Make eye contact. To begin, meet the eyes of the person you are toasting, but you don’t have to stare at them the whole time. Look around the room and make eye contact with other people in the audience. Return your eyes to the subject of your toast several times during your speech, and meet his/her/their eyes as you finish with “Please join me in offering love and best wishes to (name of the bride) and (name of the groom).”
Speak sober. Contrary to what you may have heard, drinking champagne does not make you more clever. You want this speech to be something that everyone, including you, looks back on with pleasure, not embarrassment. My advice – don’t drink alcohol until after your speech.

The best speakers are those who genuinely enjoy connecting with their listeners. Bear in mind that everyone present is there for the same reason – to celebrate the new couple. Everyone is already your friend. You are all on the same team. Prepare well, then reach out to your audience and enjoy giving your well wishes.

Photo credit: Juan Antonio Capó / Foter.com / CC BY

Stage Presence Tips for Job Interviews

Heather Stubbs — Tue, 07 May 2013 22:51:38 +0000

Many young people are graduating and starting their job search this month. This article from a few years ago is still relevant.

The moment you walk in the door for your job interview, you’ve made an impression. Make sure it’s a good one. A job interview is a performance, just as if you were on stage. Here are some stage presence techniques that you can apply to your next interview.

Your posture says volumes about what kind of person you are. A slouched, sunken-chest, round shouldered posture does not project the energy of a person ready and willing to do a good job. If you walk in the door with your head high, your chest lifted and your shoulders down and relaxed, you project an image of self-confidence and energy.

Good performers pay close attention to their costume, and so should you. When applying for a job, arrive at the interview dressed as if you already worked there. Be neat and clean, with your hair secured off your face. Understate jewellery – no distracting, dangly earrings. If you can wear something colorful near your face – a tie or a blouse – it will draw attention to your eyes. Dress according to what is appropriate to the situation and the image you want to portray.

Chances are, when you greet your interviewer, the two of you will shake hands. The point of a handshake is contact, so don’t offer someone the ends of your fingers. Let your palm connect with the other person’s palm, with your fingers curled around the bottom of their hand. For both men and women, use firm pressure (no dead fish, please) but not too much. Be considerate of the other person. If a woman is wearing a ring on her right hand, a finger-crushing grip can be extremely painful. Hardly the first impression you want to make!

Make eye contact when you shake hands and when you speak. People in western cultures expect eye contact from a speaker and are uncomfortable when it’s absent. It’s especially important to make eye contact when you say something good about yourself. Eye contact says you’re telling the truth, and it speaks of self-confidence. Everyone has an emotional need to feel seen and acknowledged, even employers and interviewers. If you make eye contact, you’re fulfilling the other person’s need, and he or she will be more comfortable with you.

Speak with a firm tone and good diction. Make sure you remember to breathe, because your voice won’t come out firmly without enough air behind it. Articulate clearly. Use the muscles of your lips and tongue energetically to form clear, distinct consonants. Lazy speaking forces the listener to work harder to understand what’s being said. The speaker should be doing the work to make sure he or she can be easily understood.

Walk in with a smile. Shake hands with a smile. Where appropriate, speak with a smile. A smile makes you feel more relaxed and it helps to break down the barriers between yourself and the people you talk to. Human beings seem to be hard-wired to respond favorably to those who smile at them.

It can be difficult to smile when you’re nervous, but remember two things:

1) Your potential employer is interviewing you, but on the other hand, you are interviewing him or her. Both of you have the task of finding out if you’re a good fit for each other. You aren’t walking in with your hat in your hand, begging for a job. You are a worthy, valuable person wanting to see if this is the right place to offer your talents. With that in mind, you can afford to be friendly and smiling.

2) An audience only knows what you show them. No matter how many butterflies are flying around in your stomach, good stage presence makes a good impression. Show your interviewer upright, energetic posture, appropriate attire, a firm handshake, clear speech and smiling eye contact, and he or she will see good energy and self-confidence.

Above all, be authentic, be yourself. Stage presence skills are not an overlay to hide your real self. Rather, they are techniques to help reveal the beautiful person you are. If the job interview were a piece of jewellery, the presentation skills are the setting, but the jewel is you.

Avoid the Information Trap!

Heather Stubbs — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:24:31 +0000

Telling people too much is as bad as not telling them anything at all. Anybody who works in a specialized field is vulnerable to the too-much-information trap – technical and scientific people especially so. It happens so easily! You love what you do, you’re enthusiastic about your message and you have so much you want to share! If you tell your listeners too much, you’re doing the mental equivalent of force-feeding, and your listeners’ brain will do the mental equivalent of regurgitating – it won’t keep down, that is, remember, what you say. It’s not that they don’t want to. It’s that they can’t.

If you want to be an effective speaker, you need to know how to keep your audience’s attention. Saying too much will have exactly the opposite effect, simply because that’s the way the human brain works.

Attention

How we pay attention is one of the most widely studied brain functions. There’s a great deal that researchers still don’t know about it, but there’s one thing they do know for sure. The human brain doesn’t pay attention to anything boring. If you’re a “techie”, all the details you want to share are fascinating for you, but for most people, especially if they’re not in your field, straight data is boring, and you will very quickly lose your listeners’ attention. The brain is hard-wired to focus on things that change, not things that stay the same. A long stream of detailed data is too much the same for the brain to stay focused on.

Here are some ways to make sure you keep your audience’s attention:

Stick to broad strokes. If your presentation is a 15-minute introduction to your business, your purpose is to spark interest, not to educate about details. Paint a general picture, and leave the details out. If you’re giving an hour-long workshop, you’ll need to convey lots of data. Still, your audience can’t stay focused listening to an hour of minutiae. Put those in a printed handout.
Organize your material in clear, easy-to-follow chunks, rather than one, long, continuous flow of data. The brain loves structure and patterns.
Number your points to make it easy to grasp your structure. Make your transitions clear by summing up the preceding point before introducing the next.
Provide “state changes”. Anything that stays the same for more than a few minutes (like a steady stream of words) begins to bore the brain. The longer your presentation, the more state changes you need to introduce. Examples of state changes are asking for a show of hands or asking questions that require an answer from the audience. Even rhetorical questions are state changes because they switch the listener’s brain from being told to being asked. Keep your audience’s attention by keeping them actively involved. Depending on the length and purpose of your presentation, you can ask audience members to discuss a point with one another, or even to stand up and stretch.
Humanize your data. The more you can make dry facts relevant to human experience, the better your listeners will pay attention. Give examples and tell stories that show how your information affects real people in real situations, and leave out any details that aren’t absolutely necessary to the story.
Involve the senses. Use descriptions that involve as many of the senses as possible – sight, sound, touch, and even taste and smell, if you can. Humanizing your data and involving the senses engages not just the brain’s pre-frontal cortex (the part of the brain behind the forehead that processes dry facts) but also the limbic system, the part that feels emotion. In order for information to be transferred from short-term memory (10 to 15 seconds) to long term memory, it must have some component of emotion or the senses.

Timing

Do not go over the time you’ve been given for your presentation. Aside from the fact that exceeding your time is inconsiderate to your audience, to any speaker following you and to the organizers of the event, your listeners will tune you out. The moment you go over your time, their brain focuses on that fact, rather than on what you are saying. No audience minds if you finish early, but they sure do mind if you finish late.

Practice your presentation before you give it, and time it. That will tell you how much or how little you can say. If you find yourself running short of time, cut something out rather than talk faster to get all your information in. People can’t remember a data dump anyway, so why would they remember it if you deliver it faster?

To keep your audience’s attention, and to have them remember what you said afterwards, forget about what you want to say. Focus on what your listeners need to hear and how they need to hear it.

Structure Your Presentation

Heather Stubbs — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 23:09:58 +0000

Whether it’s to sell, to persuade or to inform, people give presentations every day as part of their work. Here’s an article I wrote for The Experion Group Blog on the benefits of giving your presentation a well-defined structure. The Experion Group is a collection of high calibre advisors, specialists with many years of experience in their respective fields.

Structure Your Presentation

Structure! It benefits both presenter and listener. A clear framework keeps speakers on track and helps audiences follow and remember what is being said. Here’s a method for creating a structure that enables you to guide your audience on a journey from starting point to destination, and helps them stay with you along the way.

Premise

Your first priority when planning a presentation is to be clear in your own mind about your purpose. What’s the core idea you want your listeners to take away? Can you state it as a concise headline? The premise of a photographer’s talk might be, “Good composition creates great photos.” For a succession planner the core idea might be, “Advance planning avoids future headaches.” A presentation to a Board of Directors might have “Better customer service will increase profits” as the premise. Strive to write your premise in eight words or less. If your talk were a house, your premise is the roof under which everything you say is gathered.

Opening

As I mentioned in my article A Strong Start, don’t waste your precious opening moments on meaningless fillers like, “Tonight I’m here to talk to you about…” That kind of opening takes the audience’s initial intensity of interest and dials it down several notches. The first few words of your talk are probably the only time you have the full attention of the entire audience. Take advantage of that attention and dive right in! One way is to open with your headline premise and expand on it in your next sentence or two. Take a look back at the opening paragraph of this article for an example.

Three Points

Chances are you know volumes more about your topic than you have time to convey in your presentation. There’s so much you want to tell them! It’s important not to try to “pack it all in.” Your audience won’t remember everything you say, anyway. They’ll probably remember one outstanding point, and perhaps a couple more.

Let’s say you’re planning your talk and you have a host of sticky notes all over the top of your desk, each one with an aspect you could talk about. Think in terms of support for the roof of your presentation house, your headline premise. Pick no more than three points for the walls holding up that roof. The more points you make, the less your audience will remember, so discipline yourself to three. Don’t be afraid to number your points as you talk through them. It helps your audience to follow you. If they need to know more than three points, distribute a handout.

On track and on time

Building your presentation around a three point structure gives you a clear sense of direction and keeps your mind on track. If you find yourself getting off on a tangent, structure pulls you back into the right direction. If you’re concerned about forgetting which point comes next, use a 3 x 5 card with key words for each section of your talk. A quick glance will bring your thoughts into focus.

Structure also helps keep you on time. You know you have just so much time for each point, so plan it out. Be sure to allow time for your opener, your conclusion and Q&A. If audience questions threaten to derail your timing, knowing you have one or two points yet to cover allows you politely to move on by suggesting you chat with the questioner after the presentation.

Illustrate with stories

Back up your points with two or three supporting points (no more). Bear in mind that dry data is boring and will instantly be forgotten, so incorporate the human element. The surest way to keep your audience engaged is to illustrate facts with stories. Use analogies to make numbers relevant. If you have data like “At this very moment, there are 600 million stray dogs in the world,” make that number real with “That’s nearly two dogs for every person in the United States.”

Conclusion

Conclude your talk by reminding the audience of your three points and then “close the circle” by restating your opening in a way that includes a call to action. Invite your listeners to take the next step.

For your next presentation, let a clear structure keep you moving efficiently from point to point and keep your audience in step with you all the way.

Perspective and Positive Self-Talk

Heather Stubbs — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:08:42 +0000

Any quantum physicist will tell you we live in a universe that’s pulsing with vibrating energy, that energy vibrates in various frequencies and patterns, and that our very thoughts are energy. Everything we do starts with a thought, and our thoughts influence everything we do. Some vibrating thought frequencies coordinate harmoniously together, while others have a jarring effect on one another. If we think of positive thoughts as having a high frequency vibration and negative thoughts as having a low frequency, it’s easy to see how they can’t vibrate in harmony. They’re vibrating at different rates.

When speaking in public, your goal, whether you’re conscious of it or not, is to give your listeners the highest quality energy you’re capable of. I’m sure you’d agree that positive energy is a higher quality than negative energy. Since speaking originates in thought, if you want to give out positive energy, you need to start with positive thoughts. But what if you hate public speaking? What if you dread that monthly report to the management team? What if even saying your name in front of a group is a source of anxiety for you? You engage in what’s called “positive self-talk”. You talk – or think – yourself into a more positive place.

Frequencies must match

I’m not a fan of using affirmations when you don’t believe they’re true. If you already have positive feelings about your presentation, visualizing how good it’s going to be and how well you’re going to speak is beneficial. That’s amplifying what is already high quality energy. But simply saying, “I’m gonna be great! I’m gonna be great!” when your feelings don’t believe it, doesn’t move you from a negative place to a positive one. Your conscious mind is talking high frequency while your subconscious mind, where your feelings come from, is vibrating at a low frequency. They can’t work together. Energy doesn’t work that way. The disparity between the two frequencies will be visible to your audience, and you’ll come across as unsure, no matter what words you’ve been repeating in your head. Effective positive self-talk raises the vibratory frequency of your feelings by talking them gradually into a more positive, assured state. Only then can they vibrate harmoniously with positive thoughts.

Perspective

Our perspective shapes what we’re capable of thinking. A negative perspective makes it extremely difficult to generate positive thoughts, whereas a positive outlook makes positive thinking easy. A positive perspective enables positive thinking, which generates positive actions. In my own experience, I’ve found that my self-view is the primary shaper of my world-view. That’s the starting point. If I want to function – and speak – with high quality energy, I need to start with a positive opinion of myself. How we feel about ourselves colours and shapes everything we think, and since everything we do starts with how we think, our ability to create the presentation we want – indeed, the very life we want – is predicated on valuing, respecting and appreciating ourselves.

Effective positive self-talk, then, starts with acknowledging our own quality, our own worthiness, our equality with everyone else. All people are good. All people are doing what they feel is right. All people deserve respect, you no less than anyone else. Our value as human beings is not dependent on anything outside of ourselves – not achievements or other people’s approval. From that place, you are as worthy to speak as anyone on the planet.

Starting Point

From the starting point of positive self-view, you can move forward with more positive self-talk. “I can stand tall. I can have a giving attitude toward my audience rather than an adversarial attitude. I can show that I care about my listeners by looking them in the eye. I can smile. I can enjoy the interchange of energy with others. I can enjoy the challenge of doing my best.”

Any presentation skills trainer will advocate the use of positive self-talk. In order for that self-talk to be effective, positive energy needs to be coming from your whole being. Your mind, feelings and body need to be vibrating at the same high frequency. In my opinion, that experience starts with a positive perspective of yourself. Self appreciation. Self value. Self respect.

Here’s Looking at You

Heather Stubbs — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 23:28:42 +0000

Photo from Hillsboro Community Youth Choir, Hillsboro, OR

Have you ever watched a group of kindergarten children on stage for a performance? Inevitably, at least a couple of them are looking into the audience and waving to somebody special. It’s adorable in wee ones. As they get older, those little ones may learn that in the theatre, a good actor never makes direct eye contact with the audience. It’s called “dropping out of character”, and is a serious no-no. By engaging with the eyes of an audience member, the actor abandons the character being portrayed, and becomes simply a real person connecting with another real person. The illusion, the “suspension of disbelief”, which is so crucial to the audience’s enjoyment of the production, is lost.

To look or not to look

This business of eye contact – to look, or not to look – was a question I had to resolve in my own performing career. I alternated between musicals (playing a character and maintaining the illusion throughout the performance) and solo concerts (communicating directly with the audience while introducing a song, but creating an illusion by playing a character within the song.) That doesn’t mean I never looked into the eyes of my audience during a song. The question was, could I maintain the illusion? Could I avoid personal connection and stay in character, while making eye contact? There were certain people, family members particularly, with whom the pull of genuine connection was so strong, I knew it would pull me out of character. I made it a point, for example, never to look directly at my husband during a concert.

New rules

When I made the transition to public speaking, my theatrical training flipped on its head. Now audience connection was essential and illusion was the no-no! I couldn’t even depend on the illusion of connection. No more acting. I had to show the real me, and I had to make a genuine connection.

For my first forays into speaking, I lacked the courage to speak extemporaneously. What I knew was how to deliver a memorized script, so I wrote, memorized and delivered a half-hour presentation. Memorized speeches are dangerous, and the main danger is loss of connection. The stress of remembering something word-for-word tends to make the speaker’s eyes glaze over. They’re not connecting; they’re reading the script in their head. This produces tension in the back of the neck, which may cause the speaker’s eyes to rise above the audience’s heads. He or she ends up “playing to the balcony”, never looking at the people in front of them. (Unfortunately, memorized speeches are usually one of the only two types of presenting that school children do. The other is reading from a paper, and they’re not learning audience connection there, either.)

Genuine connection

Eventually, I learned that genuine connection requires eye contact. Just lining up the eyes isn’t enough, though, because you can line up eyes with someone and an invisible wall can still stand between you. A friend mentioned that she worked with a colleague for some time before realizing he had one blue eye and one brown eye. She had lined up her eyes with him, but hadn’t really looked at him. If you must deliver a memorized speech, include making audience eye contact into your practice time. Your listeners don’t want to be performed at; they want to be communicated with. That means you have to look into people’s eyes, not just for a fleeting moment, but several seconds – long enough for both your hearts to register the connection.

Love

Real eye contact with our listeners means removing barriers. To do that, we need to question how we look at others. What’s in our heart? Are we looking with respect, appreciation, understanding and compassion? Are we looking without judgement and giving others the benefit of the doubt? Are we looking with a genuine desire for their well being? In short, do we love them? I believe that to be a good speaker, you have to love both yourself and your audience.

On LinkedIn and Twitter, I’m connected with leadership consultant Dr. Jack King (@DrJackKing). In a note to me this morning, Jack wrote, “The world so desperately needs to know love, and the people who make up our extended family of 7 billion want to know, with certainty, they are loved. Everything I’ve learned in my lifetime takes me to the same place: be the one that loves them!”

When you speak, look at your audience with love, the love they so greatly need. Here’s looking at you – looking with love.

How to Tell a Story

Heather Stubbs — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:36:47 +0000

Public speaking coaches are constantly nagging their clients to tell stories in their presentations. What they don’t always explain is why, and especially, how.

Why?

Nothing engages a listener more quickly or more thoroughly than a story. Dry data is boring. If there’s one thing scientists have learned for sure about the human brain, it’s that it outright refuses to pay attention to boring things. But an audience full of dozers and smart phone checkers will instantly perk up if the speaker starts to tell a story.

Hearing and processing data engages only a small part of the brain. Stories, on the other hand, cause synapses to fire all over the brain as it imagines the setting, the characters, who said what, who did what and especially, who felt what. All the different elements of the story are processed in different parts of the brain, so stories are simply more fun for the brain because it’s more active.

Another part of the brain that longs to be engaged during a presentation – even in the most hard-boiled individual – is the limbic system, the centre of emotions. A speaker who illustrates data with a story personalizes that data, making it understandable not just at an intellectual level, but at a feeling level. Stories link facts with feelings, and it’s the feelings that make those facts interesting and memorable.

What’s the point?

Description and detail in a novel are desirable. The purpose is to entertain, to create a mood and to develop the characters. However, unless you’re a professional storyteller, rarely will you tell a story purely for the enjoyment of the story. It’s far more likely that you’ll be using narrative as an example, to illustrate a point or to support a perspective. Plan your story by keeping in mind the end – the point you want to make. Can you state it succinctly, even algebraically? A + B = C. Situation combined with action results in outcome. A eulogy, for example, might have a story about what the deceased did in a certain situation, to illustrate an aspect of their personality.

Telling a story is like taking your audience on a journey. Stating your point at the beginning is a way of advising your audience of their destination before you start out on your journey.

How?

When planning your story, work like a painter. Sketch it in with broad strokes, using the barest minimum of information the audience needs in order to get the point. When you have the broad framework established, flesh it out with enough description and detail to make it interesting. However, stories that meander or include too much detail lose their potency. Always bear in mind that good storytelling focuses on what the audience needs to hear, not on what the speaker wants to tell.

To include or not to include?

The details you include must either move the story along or serve the point of your story. For example, if I’m talking about teaching people to project their voices in a room with poor acoustics, I might say, “The room was carpeted, and had a low, acoustic-tiled ceiling and the constant, loud hum of ventilation fans.” The details illustrate the magnitude of the challenge facing the people meeting in that room, and their need for training to overcome it. The description serves the point. What my audience doesn’t need to know is the colour of the carpet, how the tables and chairs were arranged or even in what building this disastrous room was located.

Be careful about names. I’ve known otherwise good speakers who were poor storytellers because of name dropping – using names and details about “important” people to make the speaker feel important by association. Name dropping seems to be hard to recognize in oneself, but it’s transparent and irritating to listeners. Unless it’s a story about someone specific, names of people, and even places, are probably irrelevant. Whenever there are names or details you want to include, be sure they pass the test, “Does it help the audience get the point?”

Practice

Never “wing it”. Plan and rehearse your stories as carefully as the rest of your presentation. When your point is clearly in mind and you’ve chosen your details carefully and economically, you can relax into telling your story in a confident, conversational manner. That’s when your stories become the life blood in the veins of your data, and your presentation lives on in the minds of your listeners.

Managing Your Nervous System

Heather Stubbs — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:25:04 +0000

Did you know that the nervous system is the most complex system in the human body? It allows us to perceive, interpret and respond to stimuli from our environment, both on a conscious level and an unconscious level. Scientists have classified the nervous system into several groups and sub-groups, based on what they do in the body. The group that I think is of particular interest to performers of all kinds, including speakers, is the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

Autonomic nervous system

The ANS regulates functions in the body that for the most part we don’t consciously control, like breathing, digestion and the beating of our heart. Scientists further classify the ANS into two sub-systems, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). These two have completely opposite functions, each complementing the other to enable us to function in our world. To use the analogy of an automobile, we could say that the SNS is the accelerator and the PNS is the brake. Without either one of them our vehicle wouldn’t go far, or certainly not safely.

Two sub-systems

The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for revving up our internal engine. Under stress, The SNS carries messages to increase the rate and force of our heart contractions, dilate the pupils of our eyes, dilate our bronchial passages, restrict digestion and generally prepare us for vigorous physical action (“fight or flight”.) The PNS, on the other hand, carries exactly the opposite message, calming us down, slowing the heart and lowering blood pressure. It’s sometimes called the “rest and digest” system.

Imagine that you’re preparing for a presentation. Just thinking about it might make your heart beat faster, your breathing speed up and your palms become sweaty. That’s your SNS activating your accelerator, preparing you for challenging action. If there were no balancing influence, the SNS might continue to accelerate out of control, wreaking havoc on the vehicle of your body. A client of mine told me he was once so terrified before a presentation, he awoke on the morning of the event with Bell’s palsy – temporary paralysis of the muscles of one side of the face. His SNS had accelerated out of control until the vehicle of his body hit a tree.

Enter the balancing influence of the PNS. Now, a performer doesn’t want to fully put the brakes on. There’s a job to do, after all, and the engine needs to be running to do it. However, we do want to pull back on the accelerator sufficiently to keep the car in control and moving at a manageable speed. There are many ways to activate the calming influence of the PNS, such as deep breathing, meditation, yoga, walking and even yawning.

Operating on instructions

The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems don’t operate of their own free will. They act on instructions from a section of the mid-brain called the hypothalamus. It’s the hypothalamus, for example, that sends out the call for adrenaline to reinforce the “fight or flight” response. You might say that if the SNS is the accelerator and the PNS is the brake, the hypothalamus is the foot that presses those pedals. Now, here’s where things get really interesting, because in order for the hypothalamus to do its job as an “integrator” for these two systems, it receives input from the limbic system.

Aha! The limbic system contains the emotional centres of the brain. Do we feel threatened or assured that everything will be OK? Our feelings tell the hypothalamus how much pressure to apply on the accelerator or the brake, how much to rev up or to relax. That means that if we find ourselves getting too nervous or even having stage fright before a presentation, we need to change what our feelings are telling our hypothalamus to do.

Your feelings about people and things are determined by your perspective. Do you have a positive perspective or a negative one? Are you worthy to speak or not? Are your listeners your friends or your adversaries? Are you focused on giving or are you afraid you won’t get approval?

Who’s in charge?

If you don’t like your level of “nerves” before a presentation, the solution is as logical as doing Sudoku. The autonomic nervous system is regulated by the hypothalamus, which acts on input from your feelings, which are determined by your perspective. What determines your perspective? Your thoughts. And who’s in charge of your thinking? You are! It’s your choice.

Don’t Be Afraid to Speak

Heather Stubbs — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 23:53:00 +0000

Last week, I was delighted to be the guest on “Curious Muriel” blogtalk radio, hosted by Wendy Matthews and Rashmi Biswas. We covered a lot of territory in half an hour. Much of it centred on the importance of speakers knowing how to deal with their own inner state. Click here to enjoy “Don’t Be Afraid to Speak.”

A Strong Start

Heather Stubbs — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:10:16 +0000

Your opening should build the audience’s energy from your very first word. Recently I read a blog post by speaking coach, Ethan Rotman, “Real Life Examples of Terrible Opening Lines”. A couple of the 24 examples were merely weak (“It is an honor to be here; thanks for inviting me”) but the vast majority of the quotes were variations on apology. (“I hope you’ll bear with me because I’m so nervous right now!” “I really didn’t have much time to prepare…” and “I have misplaced the notes, so…”) The sad thing is that speakers routinely squander their opening moments in this way.

Full Attention

The beginning of your presentation is probably the only time you’ll have the full attention of your entire audience. Let’s face it, people’s minds wander, even yours and mine. Some people can’t resist checking a vibrating phone for that incoming text or email. A hundred things can pull your listeners’ thoughts momentarily away from your presentation. But the moment before you first open your mouth? They’re sitting there, heads up, eyes on the podium, waiting for you to speak. Your job is not to get their attention – you already have it. Your job is to keep it.

Never Apologize

Why is opening with an apology so disastrous? First of all, it starts the presentation on a negative note. Instead of building the audience’s energy from the first word, an apology drags the energy in the room down. Secondly, an apology-in-advance is an act of selfishness. Speakers who open with, “I’m so nervous, I hope I can get through this,” are trying to ensure that they get into the listeners’ good graces. It’s all about themselves. They’re not focused on doing something good for the audience, they’re merely covering their own…um…tracks. When you have the courage to dive right in – no apologies, regardless of any extenuating circumstances – you have your priorities right. You realize that public speaking is about the audience’s experience, and your own experience is secondary. When you allow what you think of them to be more important than what they think of you, the audience knows it, you know it, and everybody feels better for it.

Thank Later

Opening by thanking the group for inviting you at least isn’t negative, but it’s still weak. Why? Because it’s merely neutral. It doesn’t engage and draw people in. A genuine compliment, however, is another matter. Something along the lines of, “You all show great vision for being interested in the topic of XYZ and here’s why” is specific and felt personally by every member of the audience. Nothing gains attention like genuine appreciation. If you want to thank the group for its interest, attention and participation, do it at the end of your talk, not the beginning.

Engage their feelings.

Any opening that engages your listeners’ feelings takes their initial full attention and builds on it. One of my favourite openers is to ask two opposing questions in a manner that requires the audience to respond. For example, with a smile on my face and looking directly into people’s eyes, I raise my hand and ask, “How many of you have ever felt stage fright?” Most hands in the room will go up. My own hand in the air shows them that’s what I’m expecting of them. Then I’ll ask, “How many of you never feel stage fright?” Any hands that didn’t go up after the first question will probably rise now. After 17 words, the entire audience is personally engaged and actively participating. We’ve become a connected group, and we’re off and running.

Visuals are powerful. I give a presentation in which I start by holding up a bar of soap and asking, “If I squeeze this bar of soap between my wet hands, what happens?” I have never given that opening without somebody in the audience blurting out some version of, “It squirts out/up/down.” The visual evokes imagination, which evokes emotion.

Strong openers succeed because they involve feelings, and feelings cause people to engage with the speaker. You can open with a startling fact to engage through the feeling of surprise. You can begin with a current news article to capitalize on the feeling of immediacy. “Just yesterday, The Globe and Mail reported that…”

The first seconds

Consciously or unconsciously, an audience decides within the first few seconds whether they will open up and listen attentively to a speaker or tune out and go on a voyage inside their head. When speakers use a strong opening, they take advantage of those precious first seconds to gather in the minds of their audience, but they do it by activating some facet of their listeners’ hearts.